Description

The Iroquois, also known as the Haudenosaunee / the Five Nations and Five Nations of the Iroquois (Six Nations after 1722), and (to themselves) the Goano'ganoch'sa'jeh'seroni or Ganonsyoni, are a historically powerful important Native American people who formed the Iroquois Confederacy, a league of five (later six) distinct nations. French, Dutch and British colonists in both Canada and the Thirteen Colonies wanted to curry favor with the Iroquois; for nearly 200 years considerations of the Iroquois were a powerful factor in North American colonial policy-making decisions. All sides wooed them, each settlement feared them, politically they were unique, a large Native American polity which, until during the American Revolution, could not be divided.